Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Rommel013 09-04-07, 06:45 AM	Alright, so we just started a gestalted evil campaign using the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. The party consists of the following: Sorc/ Wilder Human (me) with a focus on talking spells. Crusader/ Fighter Human Monk/ Druid Dwarf Ranger/ Rogue Elf I think the Crusader/ Fighter is done playing with us, at least for a while and his replacement will be some sort of a tank character, possibly a Crusader/ Something. Anywho, we decided to start in Sembia, myself and the Crusader being from Sembia. We also decided to start a shipping company so we can have a legitamite business to hide behind when it would be needed since we are an evil party. To gain funding we found a somewhat wealthy New Money shipping company owner. He said he'd finance us if we can prove to him, in a week (10 days on the Faerun Calender), why he should invest in us rather than in the existing shipping companies following our proposed route. Well, we decided to bring him the head of the owner of one of the major competators, naturally. We have a room at a local slum inn and have befriended the dwarf receptionist. We have 4 balacavas on order and 4 black body suits purchased. Our current plan is to ambush the owner's personal carriage by killing the driver, then killing him. We don't want a botched assassination attempt, so to make sure we kill the driver, we're going to get our hands on a Ballista. Since we're in a port town, they will be easy to get, once we can afford it. Our current plan is as follows: The Ranger/ Scout breaks into the company's headquarters, steals a uniform and figures out when they ship their profits to the bank. We then ambush the cart carrying the gold to the bank. Next, we don uniforms we have made to look like the company uniforms. We bring the cart to the bank, load up cash onto it and hide the cart in a nearby warehouse we rent. Then, using the stolen cash, buy a ballista. We mount the ballista on the cart, paint it black so it doesn't look like the one the company uses to transport the gold. He then build some sort of visual screen around the ballista that can easily be taken down, like sheets or a collapsible wall. We then figure out when the head of the company goes to and from the headquarters. He have the Ranger/ Rogue kill the clothing maker, so she can't testify against us while we observe the company head. One day, on the owner's way back from company headquarters, we bring the cart out and get in front of him. We drop the screen, ballista the driver, kill the owner and bring his head in a burlap sack to the potential finacier. What do you all think? Improvements? Suggestions? Problems?
Cifer 09-04-07, 07:57 AM	Well, to summarise: You wanna backstab him - with a ballista?
Varia 09-04-07, 09:12 AM	Heh, that was a fun video. As to the plan, there are several things- 1- They dont actually sell seige weapons to just anyone, usually. Check the laws in your town to see if they will or wont, locally. 2- Youre worried about the tailor who made your balaclavas, but youre not worried about the the people selling you the HIGHLY RECOGNISEABLE ballista? That thing will make a pretty distinctive hole in the driver, if you hit him, not to mention the building behind him, and then the cops will be very interested in anyone who recently purchased a ballista, and those who have ballistas to sell... You therefore need to either whack the ballista seller too, which may be difficult since such people usually have military connections, or very difficult if you got it illegally since illegal weapons dealers ALWAYS have considerable security and bodyguards, or you need to somehow remove all evidence that could reveal the type of weapon used. Thats likely to involve destruction of the corpse and whatever solid object stopped the bolt. Bring several axes and a box of matches and lots of accelerant. 3- The gold cart will have guards. You either need to dispose of them too, or arrange to distract/delay them long enough for the cart and fake guards to do their thing at the bank. 4- The bank guards likely will not give gold to people they dont know. You will therefore likely have to disguise yourselves as the real guards and driver, or at least provide a reasonable excuse as to why the usual people arent there today. Also in a world of shapeshifting magic there will likely be a secret code word or something similar which you will need to aquire too. 5- You need to do the cart aquisition and guard stuff QUIETLY. If the town guard notice the cart theft before youre safely away with the gold you're hosed. 6- Ballistas usually require some specific training. I dont know if that is the case in 3.5 or not. Do you have the training, if its needed? 7- Ballistas- is the driver non-combatant enough to be taken out by a ballista? Theyre not instant death or anything. If the driver is sufficiently talented (ie- has enough levels) he will survive. You need to know if he's that talented or not, before you try it. Investigate the driver to find out. 8- What if you miss? Then the driver is alive and probably gunning it for the border as fast as he can whip his horses. You need to have something in place to prevent that. Perhaps rope barriers, or caltrops or somesuch. 9- If its just the target and his driver then why bother with the ballista in the first place? Just immobilise his ride (carts fore and aft, falling barrels, whatever) and swarm the cart with knives out. May not even have to kill the driver that way. 10- Does the target not have any guards or security? That seems odd for someone whose death would mean enough to perhaps win you a contract. Find out if he does. 11- The target is a major competitor in the shipping game. He may have gotten that way the same way you're planning to- by being a big tough thug. Find out asap. It would be, shall we say, a trifle embarrassing to break into his cart, say "and now, young Skywalker, you will die", and only then find out that the guy is twice your level and can disembowel whole villages with just his moustache and thats why he didnt bother with guards... Watch a few heist movies made before 1985 or at least set before 1985 (ie- before computers started becoming prevalent) to see the obstacles involved, and some possible solutions.
bloodtalon 09-04-07, 09:23 AM	i see another problem who si not to say the guy you aretrying to impress turns you in for assassinating the merchant leader for the reward and haveing the rest of the trading companies look favorbaly on him if you get caught later on and spill the beans on who was also in it he has alot more to loose then you. and if if he turns you in and the party says he was in it all he has to say is that he does not know you and you are trying to shift the blame so you wont get the worste punishment out there.
Rommel013 09-04-07, 10:02 PM	Thanks for all the replies. 1- It's a huge port town with heavy pirate activity in the area. We should be able to pull off getting a Balista. 2- The only reason we're worried about the balaclavas is because they were special ordered and I FUBAR'd the bluff check for our reason why we need them. The Balista won't be as big of a problem since Shield-Meet was yesterday (A major holiday during which a lot of buisness deals are made) so we're hoping that provides a bit of a smoke screen for our purchases. 3- We figured the gold cart would have gaurds and our plan is to dispose of them. Our Rogue/ Ranger's job when he figures out the gold cart schedule is to get a good look at, or steal a uniform so we can have one made by the balaclava shop since we're going to kill her anyway. 4- We were hoping my bluff of 13 at lvl 1 would get us through most of the bank guards when we reach the bank itself. The codeword is a good thought though, I guess we'll have to torture the gold cart guards for info. 5- The quiet aquisition of the gold cart is my biggest problem with the plan thus far as I seriously douby they will transport the gold during the middle of the night, so there will be witness around and I'm not high enough level to pull off a major image to hide it. Any suggestions here would be appreciated. 6- According to the DMG and Stormwrack, a Ballista is simply a giant crossbow that medium creatures take a -4 penalty on when firing. Other than that there is no special training required. 7- As for the driver, a ballista does 3d8 damage on a hit. While that would normally be good enough, I think the DM is going to make the driver double as a body guard for the owner after a comment I said warning against such a scenario. The hope is that with a Ballista shot and 4 PC swarming the driver, we'll take him down. 8- If we miss, and assuming the driver doubles as a body guard, the driver will either try and kill us, or get the carriage out of danger. I'm kind of hoping for the latter, that way we can give chase while reloading the Ballista. 9- The entire point of the Ballista was to ensure the driver, who may or may not also be the body gaurd, was killed before he can react. Also, staring down the business end of a Ballista is somewhat intimidating, so we were hoping to take the owner without much fuss by brandishing it. Also, as we are only level 1, we weren't sure if the Rogue/ Ranger could reliably kill the driver in one arrow. If he misses or only wounded the driver and the driver managed to drive the carriage to safety, then the security on the target would be stepped up, which is not what we want. 10- As for extra security, we were hoping that a combonation of intimidation and speed would help counter balance the potential for guards. 11- As for the target being able to kill us, we're not looking to capture him. If worse comes to worse, we can just Ballista him, then take the head. As far as protection ourself from being turned it. The current plan is to have me bring the head to the financier while the rest of the party waits in the hotel. If I'm not back in a certain amount of time, the rest of the party captures his family to be used as a bargining chip long enough for us to make our escape.
Kouk 09-05-07, 03:00 AM	Holy Crap. I give your group points for creativity with their evilness -- but then you lose them all for a psychotic and unnecessarily dangerous and bloodthirsty scheme that will most likely end in the deaths of several of you and/or result in you getting run out of town. First of all, you need to impress an investor. Is this investor a Lawful Evil priest of Bane or Cyric? If the answer is no to any part of that question, then presenting him with a head will likely not win him over. Even assuming this guy is NE, bringing him a head proves nothing at all to him other than your willingness to kill. Your goals here would be to A. Prove yourselves the better investment or, B. Prove the competitor a worse choice What do you accomplish by bringing him the head of your competitor? I would say all you are accomplishing is telling the world that your company will kill anyone that stands in their way. If this doesn't sound like the best sales pitch in Faerun, then I would think you should avoid getting that reputation. Sembia is not a totally Evil country, just a bit greedy. Proving that you will kill people involved in business does not send a message of either your company being good, or other companies being bad. If anything it would make all legitimate businessmen (even if they "bend" the laws when possible) avoid having anything to do with your group, and/or have you rubbed out for their own safety. Here is some advice I wish more adventurers would take to heart: Don't bring people severed heads unless specifically requested, or unless you need to intimidate someone related to the previous owner of that head. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- OK, let's start this plan over. Fortunately you have not done much more than buying a wool hat. Your true goal is to prove your company superior to others, or prove other companies inferior to yours. This is very hard for a new company. It normally would require years of marginal work as you build up a reputation for fairness, speed, and taking care of the goods to be transported. We don't have time for that. While it certainly is a good idea to build up your company as legitimately as possible -- if you are going to have a front for your operations, it is better to be profitable and legal -- you will probably want to "prove" to the rest of the business community that your competitor company (I will call it Company A) is not capable of handling the business you are competing for. This can be done more effectively, and safely, by means other than what you have proposed. OK, you are in Sembia. Let me read you an excerpt from the section on Sembia in the FRCS book, pg 188: "Sembia is a land of experienced merchants who know how to hold onto power and young traders who scheme for a share of it. Sembians relish the art of the deal, the skill of gaining advantage through negotiation instead of through outright falsehood or cheating. ... Unlike the lawless thugs of the Moonsea cities and the Pirate Isles, Sembians generally observe the laws of contracts, debts, and interest payments. Quite often Sembians observe these laws all too well, exploiting loopholes that others had not imagined. ...." This is the kind of environment you should keep in mind, because your DM probably is using the book for a guide. Maybe the severed head thing would fly in Zhentil Keep, but not here. I assume you are competing for some kind of business transporting by sea? I will give you some alternative suggestions on how to handle this issue. 1. You indicated there were currently many pirates about. The Sea of Fallen Stars can be quite dangerous even without pirates, what with all those Sahuagin, Morlocks, Scrags and Merrows... If a few boats were to go missing before returning to port, would that be so unusual? Maybe you can strike a deal with some pirates (or more savage sea creatures) by having them take out one or two boats from your competitor. All you have to do is supply them with the shipping route and probably the crew roster, and cargo manifest. Bumping off somebody's competitor is probably something pirates have done before after all... You don't even need them to bring you back anything, let them keep it all. It is probably better if your deal with them ends as soon as possible. The only problem with this idea is that Company A might be bribing the pirates to not attack them (a common practice) and so you may have to bribe them "more". There are many ways you can get the information about the ship, the most direct is probably just breaking in to the headquarters and finding the files about it. You might be able to break into the Harbormaster's place, but that seems much more dangerous and risky. This way you get some use from the balaclavas... You might also try bribes, manipulating spells, etc. If at all possible, you don't want anyone to trace it back to your group though. 2. Dig up dirt. This also involves gaining access to Company A's records. Find out any shady deals they have made, or any big mistakes they have been keeping under wraps. You can also find dirt about the higher-ups in Company A, and spread that around. Creating completely unfounded rumors is also a tool, but by itself it is not very effective at damaging a reputation. If there is nothing like that to be found, consider planting some false evidence and discretely tipping off the authorities. Nothing says, "Don't do business with this company" more than a scandal, as I'm sure you can tell from experience in real life. If the main competitor is embroiled in a big, public scandal, almost nobody will do business with them for fear of being associated with the scandal, at least until the heat dies down. 3. Sabotage. Company A can't do business if their equipment doesn't work. At the very least, it can cast some doubt in the minds of those looking to hire. You can mess with their cranes or carts, give the horses diseases, but the biggest hit would be to damage their ships. If possible, something that would cause the ship to sink while out at sea, but just destroying it in the harbor would be enough. The more you can make this seem like an accident, the more effective it will be. Try to hide yourselves as much as possible, and use magic to get things accomplished. You can get potions of Water Breathing and "scuba" to the boats in the water, and do the damage under the waterline. Fires also work, but not very well to sink boats in port. Most big port cities probably have some sort of "fire department", even if that just means an Adept with a Wand of Create Water. You can start a small fire to draw any guards' attention away from the docks perhaps, or spook the horses, hire some girls to distract them, whatever. 4. Blackmail or kidnapping. I would really encourage you to not use these methods, because they can easily be traced back to you. Since you are all low level (you said 1?) you really shouldn't risk any kind of fight with anybody at all, especially if they have guards. But, if you were to kidnap someone close to the person in charge of the company, you could get them to do all sorts of things. Same with blackmail, but that might be hard to get information for. 5. Bribes. Bribe the guy who is offering the contracts. This is a simple way to go about it, but it may be expensive. It has the benefit of probably being acceptable to the less upstanding merchants, but you definitely should be absolutely certain that this guy is the kind to take bribes, and you have to find out the kind of bribes he takes. If you offer bribes to an honest merchant, or you offer too little to a corrupt one, the deal is almost certainly doomed. 6. Mix and match the above, but do not let things be traced back to you if possible. This does not mean kill all witnesses, it means choose your business partners wisely. There may be a Thieves Guild or some other kind of unsavory element that might be able to help. That's about all I can think of for now. The group as you have described it (you could give us more information) seems like they could handle a stealth mission or two. A Monk/Druid should be pretty quiet and powerful and as a Dwarf he has Darkvision, the Ranger/Rogue definitely should be good at sneaking somewhat and opening locks, and as a spellcaster you should be able to pull some tricks out of your bag to either help the other members or go in yourself. Pool your money for this. Some kind of Potion of Invisibility or similar item would be great in a stealth mission, in case someone comes along when there's no place to hide, or just to make a fast exit. Partially used Wands, or some Scrolls might be cheaper. Also, items like Boots of Elvenkind and such are a plus, but I doubt you could afford them. Get some good spells, like Silent Portal from the Spell Compendium (level 0 Sorc/Wiz) to let you open windows and doors without any noise, Ghost Sound to distract guards, Alarm (silent mode) to alert you to movement, Unseen Servant or Mage Hand for various things. The only problem would be your verbal components. You are a spellcaster, think of some good spells to use, either Arcane or Psionic. It is a long shot, but if possible get a metamagic rod of silent spell, or manifest powers without displays. The Fighter may have a lot of sitting around to do, but maybe he can just guard your shop or something. If he can't sneak around, he shouldn't be nearby except to rush in if a fight obviously breaks out from guards discovering you. If a guard sees your faces, kill him. If you want to be more devious, you can use Disguise Self... I still wouldn't recommend personal interaction though. You should either steal things if you break into the building, or else take only documents. If you take nothing and leave no traces, people won't know what is going on. If you steal just the documents you need though, then it can be traced back to you because your company is competing for a big contract. Steal some random ones, or ones about future business deals in general even if you only need a single boat's information. This way it might just be an inside job with someone working with pirates. Ideally, you could just make a copy of the documents but I don't know how you could do that well. I think there is a Skill Trick in Complete Scoundrel that lets you memorize text, but there would probably be too much. The spell Amenuensis in the Spell Compendium might be helpful, but I don't know how long it takes (it makes copies of text). Any of these methods would probably work better than straight murder of half a dozen people (at least in the long run). If you do it right, your company looks the same (if not better by comparison), but the other company looks much worse.
Rommel013 09-05-07, 03:43 AM	The idea of bringing the investor the severed head of the opposition was to prove there are no lengths we wouldn't go to in order to make the business successful although I do admit that there are a lot of question marks, especially in regards to the investor. I don't know what his alignment is, although I doubt they are LE, which is why we developed the idea of having the rest of the party in place to kidnap his family if things go awry at the meeting. The business we proposed to start was bringing Iron, Copper and Gems to Sarkh from the nation north east of Sembia, I don't have the book on me to give the name, I appologize, the DM took it to research so more on Sembia. The ideas you propose of inventing or revealing a scandal, sabatoge, bribes, blackmail, etc were all proposed, but we came to the general consenses that we don't have time for that. He have 9 1/2 days until the meeting with the investor to prove we are a good investment. The DM took the character sheets, so I can't quote them, however I know I have silent portal, mage hand and conceal thoughts. We have a potion of invisibility (Monk/ Druid is from the Sea of Steam and picked that as his starting bonus item). As for more information on the other players, I can't give much as this was our first sitting and it was mostly role-playing. I do know the following: In General: -No one has the forgery skill (I plan on dropping Wilder and gestalting as either a Bard or Rogue for skills so I'll be picking this up, but that's not much help right now.) -I'm the only one with Diplomacy and it's a cross-class skill for me. -I've got a 13 in Bluff, so we were hoping to use that pretty heavily to get us into places like the Bank and Company A's headquarters. Ranger/ Rogue Elf: -Ranged Combat Specialist. -Sneaking and Stealth Specialist -I do not think he has Open Lock Monk/ Druid Dwarf: -I do not believe has much in the way of stealth Crusader/ Fighter: -Will not be coming to the next few sessions and will probably be phased out. ?/?: -We will be having a replacement for the Crusader/ Fighter who wants to play a tank character, but I'm not sure what he's going to do. I'm going to try and get him to do a Crusader/ Sword Sage. I'm thinking of trying get convince the group to kidnap the owner of Company A's family so we can blackmail him into investing into our company, then we can use that as evidence to present to the investor that we will not be in direct competition with Company A under the pretense of: "Why would they invest in us if we're going to be a direct competitor of theirs?" The idea needs some fine tuning as it could be easily traceable. I really to thank you guys for this help, keep sending ideas!
Kouk 09-05-07, 03:51 AM	Hehe, 9 days is plenty to cause all sorts of trouble. The problem with anything dealing directly with people is you have to kill them when you are done or else they will just expose your plots. If all that matters is getting that contract now, then it may be an OK option to kidnap, but eventually people will find out what happened, and you will get no future contracts (probably just a lot of future legal problems). If you must kidnap and manipulate the boss of the other company, I don't think having him invest in your company proves much of anything either. It would be simpler to have him turn down the other contract, perhaps say he is too busy or just not interested. It just seems to me like all the plans you have so far are extraordinarily chaotically aligned, and don't give any thought to the future. If nobody in the party is of non-chaotic alignment, and nobody has high Intelligence and/or Wisdom scores, I don't think the idea of having a business as a front for your shadier activities will work very long at all... If you like the idea, it would probably be better to attach yourselves to an NPC with those kinds of resources and evil inclinations to act as the "mastermind" or some sort of business partner. Perhaps you aren't the only ones interested in damaging the other company?
Rommel013 09-05-07, 04:10 AM	The reason we're not really caring what happens to the company long term is we really only want it as a way to launder money and use it as a front to buy items tat individuals can't or would arose too much suspision. The only problem I have with causing trouble for the company is it doesn't seem like it would prove to the investor we are a good company to invest it. Oh look, that company is have a bad streak, let's let it clear up before we invest. It doesn't give a reason to invest in us, just not to invest in them. As for the chaotic alignment inclination, we kind of all agreed that we would just bump off anyone that raised any sort of complaint against us. Granted it would be known that people who voice problems with this company get killed, but if we're the only option to do the shipping, then they don't have much choice. We plan on doing a hostile take over or simply bankrupting the other major competitor other than Company A. Company A is simply based out of the town we are currently in, that's why we've targeted them. "Perhaps you aren't the only ones interested in damaging the other company?" This is a good point that we never really explored. Perhaps we can get some sort of temporary alliance going with some other group to help dirty Company A's reputation.
Kouk 09-05-07, 12:52 PM	As long as it is just a temporary deal anyway, causing a huge mess probably isn't that much of a concern. Are you all using false names? :P I don't think you can completely eliminate all competition though, unless it is a tiny city. There would definitely be larger corporations throughout the entire country, and also from neighboring nations as well.
Rommel013 09-05-07, 08:17 PM	There are other competition in other nations and whatnot and thus far we have not used our real name for anything :cool: I'm not saying we want this to fail. By no means, we want this business to do well. The only problem we are seeing after I discussed some of the ideas presented with the rest of my group is it doesn't seem like any of them will prove we are a good investment, simply that the other is a bad, which as you pointed out, there are other companies, some of them quite major.
Euclid 09-05-07, 08:22 PM	Remember, if you're evil, and there are two ways to do something, a really evil way that isn't very effective, or a neutral or good way that is, you do the neutral or good one. There's no need to be evil when doing so is blatantly stupid.
Kouk 09-05-07, 08:51 PM	With 9 days, you could perhaps actually run some other jobs and do them really well :P I think discrediting the other company would be enough, I got the impression it was down to that company and yours. You could also try some of that Bluff skill to lie about other jobs you've done in the past that were really great (don't go overboard), or get some NPCs to forge past business transaction documents. Something like you are trying to start a new branch of a company from Aglarond or Turmish or some other country that is a ways off. Any of you guys speak Damaran? Some Diplomacy may also work to persuade the investor. Try to boost your Charisma if possible. If you Charm or somehow manipulate a friend of his into putting in a good word about your company, that could help as well. Try taking out some of his employees to bars and showing them a good time. If you get them drunk, you can probably get a bonus on your Bluff checks (or rather, a penalty for their Sense Motive) and can tell some great stories about your imaginary life as a transporter, like avoiding pirates and sea monsters, surviving through storms with all your fragile cargo intact, and whatever else those guys brag about.
CCS 09-06-07, 01:18 AM	Holy Crap. I give your group points for creativity with their evilness -- but then you lose them all for a psychotic and unnecessarily dangerous and bloodthirsty scheme that will most likely end in the deaths of several of you and/or result in you getting run out of town. . I think this pretty well sums up my own assessment of your plan. Kudos for creativity, but my 8-ball predicts a bad outcome....
Rommel013 09-06-07, 01:23 AM	That's sort of the conclusion I drew, so I figured I'd see what the board thought, get some ideas bouncing around. I got the DM to let me do a half-rebuild on my character since we had never done psionics before and I was more than dissapointed in my Wilder selection. He's letting me swap it out for rogue, so I should have some more out-of-combat skills to bring to bear on the situation such as forgery, diplomacy, intimidate and the like. With that in mind I'm think I'm going to try and get the investor to go out to a bar and get him drunk so he'll take penalty on sense motive due to the wisdom drop, then bluff my ass off, supported by some forged documents. Any specific ideas or suggestions?
Kouk 09-06-07, 04:34 AM	That's sort of the conclusion I drew, so I figured I'd see what the board thought, get some ideas bouncing around. I got the DM to let me do a half-rebuild on my character since we had never done psionics before and I was more than dissapointed in my Wilder selection. He's letting me swap it out for rogue, so I should have some more out-of-combat skills to bring to bear on the situation such as forgery, diplomacy, intimidate and the like. With that in mind I'm think I'm going to try and get the investor to go out to a bar and get him drunk so he'll take penalty on sense motive due to the wisdom drop, then bluff my ass off, supported by some forged documents. Any specific ideas or suggestions? Well, I do suggest you find out what the penalties are exactly for being drunk. Drunkenness is not covered in the Core rules I believe, though there was a system in the Arms and Equipment Guide, and maybe Cityscape. But anyway, find out from the DM if getting drunk does anything to the character. I kind of doubt the guy in charge would go out with a total stranger who he knows is trying to get something from him directly, but who can say? He probably wouldn't get too mad even if you critically fail all your checks, you did pay for his food and drinks after all (you did pay, right? :D) EDIT: Oh, and try to find out the kind of places the guy goes to, and then you can surprise him with your "shared" sense of taste when you take him to his favorite bar. Or else a good restaurant, but if you go too expensive (places he would never dream of going to) he might see it as a bribe.